


exactly where they'd fall

by alileely



Series: a little wonder's 23 days of wonder entries [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Good Omens AU, I don't really know what I'm writing, M/M, Religious Content, Slight Mentions of War, basically a word vomit, chenle is a nice demon, jisung is a curious angel, what's the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27990255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alileely/pseuds/alileely
Summary: "Makes you wonder, doesn't it," the low and playful voice said, reaching Jisung's ears from beside him which only seconds ago was empty, "if God truly loves us."Fallen angels rarely land gracefully. It's a long fall with an explosive impact, and Chenle had suffered neck pains for decades after that. But Chenle couldn't help but think that perhaps he had fallen exactly where he should — by Jisung's side and into his life.
Relationships: Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le
Series: a little wonder's 23 days of wonder entries [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048756
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	exactly where they'd fall

**Author's Note:**

> Before you begin, please note that this work contains a religious theme. There are also slight mentions (and by _slight_ , I mean appearing in one paragraph at most and not going in-depth) of homophobia, bullying, and war.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it," the low and playful voice said, reaching Jisung's ears from beside him which only seconds ago was empty, "if God truly loves us."

Turning to the side, he was met by a figure in a dark wool cloak, such a stark contrast from his own white garments. His eyes flashed a bit of gold every now and then, making his playful smile seem not-so-innocent and a bit more... evil. But his voice sounded youthful and mischievous, as though he were a child who found everything amusing, laughed at the silliest things, found joy in the mundane.

Jisung's eyes strayed back to the ark in its early stages of building. This was definitely not silly nor mundane. Yet here he was, this dark figure, smiling as if this was the most entertaining show he has ever seen in his entire life. He also cracked his neck a couple of times, Jisung noted, and it sounded painful each time. Come to think of it, there had been a large thud before he heard him speak, and Jisung could not help but wonder if this man had tripped on his own two feet. After all, the ground was flat and the grass... well, grass could hardly trip anyone.

"No, it doesn't," Jisung replied almost out of instinct. But even then, he could not ignore how his voice had wavered as if it had a life of its own, as if it was questioning his own mind. _Is this really what you want me to say?_ it seemed to ask.

But he was quick to shake those thoughts out of his head. From the moment he was created, he was taught not to question God's Word. "He has a plan. He always does. It is not always for us to know or understand. It's... _ineffable_."

There was a scoff as the man spoke again, "What use is that?"

"What?" Jisung frowned, feeling confusion well up in his gut, sinking its claws into him slowly, surely, turning into something else.

"Where are your wings?"

"Lesser angels don't have them."

"Oh, so you have hierarchy up there, too? They're all just thirsty for power."

"That's not true. Hierarchy was made to maintain order—"

"It was made for people to get this illusion that they can lord over others."

"—and ensure that the principles and policies of heaven are kept. And don't even try to tell me that there isn't a hierarchy down there, too."

"Yeah, and they're bunch of pompous assholes."

 _Yeah, up there, too_.

"Stop changing the subject. What do you mean, _what use is that_?"

"I mean, God's up there making plans without consulting anyone and then subjecting people to doing it without question? Seems like a bit of an asshole to me," the man scoffed. "Why the hell is He making plans for other people that they aren't meant to understand? It's rubbish."

"God knows what's best for us," Jisung argued.

"That's why all these people have to die?" the dark-cloaked man asked, looking around at the crowd gathered to watch Noah — _poor Noah_ , they whispered, _gone insane_ — and looking back at Jisung with a challenging look.

"There are wicked people on this earth."

"Then get rid of them," the man said. "Why does everyone else have to get dragged into this?"

"Because they rejected God," Jisung said firmly. "Noah had been told to call them to repentance, but they refused. And now, the flood... must happen."

"And you were the one who gave Noah this mission, I take it?"

"No, no, I'm... I'm just here to make sure the ark gets built and Noah and his family, along with the animals, safely depart on the day that the Lord had set."

"Oh, so you're an errand angel," the man chuckled. "Actually, that's all of you."

"I know why you're here," Jisung said accusingly. He glowered at the man, who simply raised an eyebrow in amusement. "You're here to tempt me into sin, into questioning God."

"And is it working?"

Jisung's frown deepened as he saw the slight smirk tugging at the corners of the man's lips and let out a low scowl. "You wish."

The last thing the man said before disappearing into thin air was, "Maybe next time."

That was the first time that Jisung, amiable angel and messenger of the Almighty, encountered Chenle, roguish demon and servant of the King of Darkness.

* * *

"Fancy seeing you here."

Jisung didn't even need to turn to see who it was. He had encountered him enough times in the past decades to know his voice from a mile away, and it was a voice that he found that he didn't really mind hearing every now and then. Of course, certain rules state that he was not meant to consort with _his_ kind. But this one, _this one_ wasn't that bad.

_If music be the food of love, play on._

_Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,_

_The appetite may sicken, and so die._

_That strain again, it had a dying fall._

"Don't you enjoy watching plays?" he asked as Chenle settled by his side, shoving hands in his trousers' pockets. The young man pointedly directed his gaze at the stage, where Duke Orsino was pining away and professing his love for beauteous Lady Olivia.

"Dramatic," he tutted. "Shakespeare always has a thing for grand gestures of love and idealistic love-at-first-sight scenarios. Look where that got Romeo and Juliet."

"Oh, stop," Jisung scolded him. "The mistaken identity here is actually rather amusing."

"Well I, for one, don't support Shakespeare's dramatic delusions about love and historical revisionism," Chenle said, earning him an elbow in the side. " _Ouch_. What, you can't say it isn't true. Come on, Jisung. _Et tu, Brute_?"

"Then fall Caesar. What about it?"

"That's not how it happened and you know it," Chenle grunted. "We were both there."

"Yes, but don't you think it's a bit crude to say—"

" _Et tu, Brute_ doesn't nearly have the same intensity and rage as _You fucking bastard_ , does it?" Chenle said, shoulders shaking with mirth as his loud, almost shrieking laugh resounded in the playhouse. People turned to them with glaring eyes and a few voices hushed him. His laughter died down, but Chenle's amused smile remained. "And it wasn't even Brutus that he spoke to, wasn't it? It was that Decimus soldier."

"You're still insisting that you didn't play a part in that?" Jisung spoke accusingly.

"All I did," Chenle spoke carefully, "was give him a little push. The anger and jealousy and thirst for power was there long before I tempted him to join Cassius in his plot."

"Still, you played a part," Jisung insisted. "It's the demon's nature."

"Our nature is the same as yours," Chenle said. "After all, we're all woven from the same thread. We were angels once, too, you know. You have the same nature that gives me the predisposition to do evil, and I have the same nature that urges you to do good. Not that different, really."

" _God has given you one face and you make yourselves another_ ," Jisung said, not taking his eyes off the stage and the weary actors. "Shakespeare, _Hamlet_ , 1599."

" _Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners_ ," Chenle spoke. There was a momentary pause before Jisung turned slowly to face his unlikely acquiantance, confusion evident on his face.

"Where's that from?"

" _Othello_ ," Chenle shrugged. "He hasn't written it yet."

In that moment, Jisung could feel the confusion that he had felt since the moment he first met Chenle, watching Noah and his family build the ark, grow into seeds of doubt. Is it really in their nature to do certain things and be a certain way? Or do their own choices weigh more heavily in what they truly are?

* * *

This question, though it did not keep him up at night, remained buried in the back of his head. 

He remembered it during the time he was watching over Lapu-Lapu and his men, anticipating the Battle of Mactan. Chenle insisted that he had done it for a good laugh — causing a low tide so Magellan and his men, prepared for battle aboard their sturdy and well-equipped ships, would be forced to abandon them and wade through the waters onto the shores of Mactan.

He remembered it during World War II, when he had approached Jisung with that same playful, only slightly sinister smile. He walked with such an easy gait as if they weren't in the middle of a genocide and warring times. He had made the suggestion so simply: he would influence a man to save as many Jews as he could as long as Jisung promised that his side would ensure that Hitler would be defeated.

Most people found it befuddling that Schindler, once a loyal supporter of Hitler and owner of a factory that supplied armaments for the Nazis, would turn and save 1,200 Jews that worked for him. Jisung knew why.

He remembered it whenever he found himself passing through or staying in South Carolina, when he and a few others were arrested after joining the Freedom Rides. Jisung had asked why he saved him. Chenle just shrugged as they bought ice cream (that, obviously, he made Jisung pay for as "debt" for saving his neck).

"No fun without you here," he had said.

Jisung thought the same about him. _No fun without you here._

* * *

He remembered it even now as he fell from a tree onto a park bench.

It was a chilly winter and he was trying to get a little baby bird back into its nest, where it had fallen from. It was easy to fall from bird nests, but Jisung wondered how in the world it fell from a tree cavity. He smiled to himself, thinking that there truly was so many things in the world he didn't know.

Perhaps he had become too comfortable, causing him to lose his footing and fall onto the park bench right below him. He could swear it was empty before, but as he pushed himself up as he cradled his head, a mocking voice said, "It comes with the long legs, I suppose, being clumsy."

Warmth bubbled in Jisung's chest as he looked up, his lips stretching into a joyous smile. "Here to cause innocent people to slip on the ice and fall flat on their faces?"

"That's the fun in Christmas."

Jisung sat back on the bench, smiling at the man. Chenle was dressed stylishly in a sleek black suit. Hardly ideal for winter. But Chenle had told him once that apparently demons don't feel cold _("It's the fires of hell always following us wherever we go, getting ready to pull us back in the pits of darkness," Chenle had told him once and Jisung couldn't for the life of him tell whether he was joking or not)_.

"How are you spending the holidays?"

"Oh, pulling a few tricks here and there," Chenle shrugged, letting out a relaxed sigh as he slouched on the bench. "Maybe sticking a few people's tongues on ice sculptures. How about you? Any plans for the birth of the Lord and Saviour?"

"Ah, just staying in," Jisung said. He had opened a bookshop a little over 50 years ago, and he had just gotten this new telescope, which he hoped would give him a spectacular view of the meteor shower on the 13th and again a beautiful spectacle of the double-planet on the 21st.

"Oh, yeah, what about that little brat you were nannying?"

Six years ago, Jisung had been assigned to guard a child named Abby. It was then that he had run into Chenle for the first time in this decade, when he found him messing with the vending machine so that it would produce anything but the snack that you picked. He had also been present for Abby's birth, declaring himself her "guardian demon".

Jisung wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing. But so far, Chenle had only gotten her into necessary trouble, such as punching a boy in the face for calling her "fat" and kicking another in the balls for pushing her onto the ground.

"She is _not_ a little brat, and you've been nannying her just as much."

"Oh, what's whispering _don't hold anger in your heart, forgive your enemies_ gonna do for her when those bullies push her around?" Chenle burst out in frustration. "Forgiveness is going to end her up with a couple of bruises and shattered self-esteem."

"And that's what you're there for, right?"

Jisung had learned by this time that good and evil are not necessarily two different, opposing forces. They were two sides of the same coin, and fallen angels were still angels by nature, just walking around with a different name.

And as more time passed, the concept of evil and good became blurred. Jisung had watched kingdoms rise and fall, people get slaughtered and enslaved. He had witness people suffering — some rightfully so, but most of them undeserving. He had seen famine, war, death, pestilence. Not in their true forms, no, but he had seen them in action and he had stayed by the humans' side, shared in their pain and grief.

_Is this the plan? Is this the will?_

"I still don't understand why you just can't do it yourself," Chenle said scathingly, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Surely you don't think God's plan is to let this girl get bullied?"

"God's plan is—"

"Don't say ineffable. Just don't," Chenle angrily growled, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away. In fact, Jisung wasn't. He had a different word for it this time. One that he wasn't quite sure was appropriate for someone like him who held the title of "angel".

But Jisung didn't really care now. He had long decided that he would do what he thought was right, and he would help those in need. Egotistical, perhaps. Self-important, one might say. The very characteristics that led to the fall of Lucifer. But maybe, Jisung thought, he already decided the moment he had spoken to this strange being, this freak of nature. Because as far as he was concerned, the person beside him right now was not a demon.

He was Chenle, and he was his friend. And he was many things, but he was not a bad person.

* * *

These past few decades, Chenle had laid low. Just a few harmless pranks here and there, anything to ensure that he wouldn't get killed by his superiors. He didn't find purpose in doing his Majesty's bidding anymore. The Devil's will was, and he had already figured this out for himself a long time ago, wrong. Anyone with a brain and two eyes could see that.

But he just could not figure out if God's will was right. War, famine, pestilence, and death — weren't these all His creations as well? If everything was created by Him, and if everything starts and ends with Him, then it would only be logical to think so. But if he was so Almighty, then why can't he eradicate these things? Why did he create them in the first place?

Chenle didn't have the answers. And he knew Jisung didn't either.

"Funny, these people," he snorted, watching the people walking by. "Not even His angels know what His plans are and here these people come, thinking they can read and understand and just know what God wants, what He's saying. They read a few verses and suddenly they think it's their messianic mission to purge the world of homosexuals. Like love is a sin."

"They don't know any better."

"So, when will they ever?" Chenle asked.

He was only met by silence. Chenle knew what that silence meant. But he never called him out on it. An angel's doubt is dangerous, and he didn't want any harm to befall his best friend.

"I don't think angels are good."

Chenle turned to his friend, waiting for him to continue.

"I don't think demons are bad," he said, slowly, as if picking out his words, stringing them together carefully just like how every star had been placed so gently, so lovingly in the sky to adorn it. He breathed in as he went on, "But I don't think angels are bad and demons are good, either. I think you are a demon, and I am angel, and the good and the bad are our choices."

"I don't think they would like that," Chenle chuckled. "The higher-ups."

"Well, they can be a bit pretentious, can't they?" Jisung joked, but his wistful smile said he meant it. "They could use a bit of a fall. Knock some sense into them."

* * *

Fallen angels rarely land gracefully. It's a long fall with an explosive impact, and Chenle had suffered neck pains for decades after that. He often thought about what would happen if he had never met this angel, this strange being, this freak of nature. He would probably be a symbol of doom, blindly carrying out his Majesty's orders to tempt people and to turn them against God.

He didn't believe in that anymore. He didn't believe in either of them, he thought. It was too tedious. One didn't want his plans to be understood, one didn't want his plans to be defied. It was too much work, and Chenle thought it shouldn't have to be that complicated. But he believed in kindness, and in choices, and in choosing to be kind.

Chenle had never really wanted to fall from grace. He just hung around the wrong sort. But he couldn't help but think that perhaps he had fallen exactly where he should — by Jisung's side and into his life.

**Author's Note:**

> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/alileely) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/alileely)
> 
> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Honestly, this is basically a word vomit. I spent the entire time writing this thinking, "What am I doing?" Still, it's worth a disclaimer here that this may contain historical inaccuracies and that this is purely fictional and is not meant to reflect the beliefs of the idols portrayed here. But yeah, other than that, I hope you enjoyed this read (though the theme is a bit more on the heavier side). Your comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms would be much appreciated!!!
> 
> Sending u hugs ♡
> 
> P.S. I'm kind of thinking about maybe making a series about Abby and her guardian angel and guardian demon's antics. I just think it would be fun to write and I'm definitely going to make that more lighthearted than this one.


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